Prof. Dr. Dr. Sergej Sizov

Welcome!

In July 2013 I've joined the Heinrich-Heine-University of Dusseldorf as an associate professor in the field of Web Science.
This Web site gives insights into my research profile and current activities, teaching offers,
collaborations and partnerships.
I also provide supplementary information for visitors, reviewers, applicants, and students.

Research Interests

My current research topics include Information Retrieval,
Web Mining, Semantic Web, multi-modal analysis of social media, and cross-lingual retrieval. A novel direction since 2009 is the
inter-disciplinary research in the field of Web Science.

You might be interested to learn more about our special interest group
FourCats which is working in this field. Recent activities, news and announcements
can be found in our
WeST Research Blog and on
ResearchGate.

Key objectives

Web Science:
novel paradigm of inter-disciplinary research on issues related to the us-age and
the technologies of the World Wide Web: development and growth models of the Web,
its capacity for furthering global knowledge and communication, values of trustworthiness, privacy and respect for social
boundaries, examination of the social impact of the Web on human society

Key Publications

This page shows an overview of my recent important publications. A more comprehensive overview (including book chapters, workshop contributions, short/demo papers, older papers, etc.)
can be found in addendum sections: "More Publications" and "Older Publications".

You might also be interested to look
into the "Impact and Rankings" section which contains pointers to major bibliographic sources and success/impact estimators.

Stefan Siersdorfer and Sergej Sizov and Gerhard Weikum:
Goal-oriented Methods And Meta Methods For Document Classification And Their Parameter TuningProceedings of the 2004 ACM CIKM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, Washington, DC, USA, November 8-13, 2004, pp. 59-68

Stefan Siersdorfer and Sergej Sizov:
Restrictive Clustering And Metaclustering For Self-organizing Document CollectionsSIGIR 2004: Proceedings of the 27th Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Sheffield, UK, July 25-29, 2004, pp. 226-233

Sergej Sizov and Martin Theobald and Stefan Siersdorfer and Gerhard Weikum and Jens Graupmann and Michael Biwer and Patrick Zimmer:
The BINGO! System For Information Portal Generation And Expert Web SearchCIDR 2003

Stefan Siersdorfer and Sergej Sizov and Gerhard Weikum:
Goal-oriented Methods And Meta Methods For Document Classification And Their Parameter TuningProceedings of the 2004 ACM CIKM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, Washington, DC, USA, November 8-13, 2004, pp. 59-68

Stefan Siersdorfer and Sergej Sizov:
Restrictive Clustering And Metaclustering For Self-organizing Document CollectionsSIGIR 2004: Proceedings of the 27th Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Sheffield, UK, July 25-29, 2004, pp. 226-233

Sergej Sizov and Stefan Siersdorfer and Martin Theobald and Gerhard Weikum:
The BINGO! Focused Crawler: From Bookmarks To ArchetypesProceedings of the 18th International Conference on Data Engineering, 26 February - 1 March 2002, San Jose, CA, pp. 337-338

Wladimir Amphilochiev, Boris Barbanell, Sergej Sizov:
The use of Viscous Fluid Model for Simulation of the Flow of Polymer Lotions in Pipes2nd International Conference "MorlnTech", St.-Petersburg, Russia, 1997

KoMePol: interdisciplinary
research project
"Communication, Media, Politics", funded by the research initiative of
Rhineland-Palatinate: analysis of mediation, perception and processing of politically
relevant discourses in different media sources.

My role: coordinator of a partial project, devoted to mining of social media with geo-spatial awareness.

Office Hour

Social Contact Channels

Transportation

Koblenz has a very central position in central Europe and in Germany and can be easily
reached by plane (including many low-cost airlines, such as Ryanair, Germanwings, Air Berlin, easyJet), by
train (the majority of international long-distance trains in Germany pass through the Rhine valley and Koblenz), and by
car (three highways, part of the European highway network).

Arrival by plane

Airport Frankfurt International
(FRA): Major international airport about 115 km from Koblenz. All international airlines. Many direct trains to Koblenz,
travel time app. 70 min (25 EUR), car ride from the airport app. 60 min.

Airport Dusseldorf International
(DUS): International airport 130 km from Koblenz. Many international airlines. Many direct trains to Koblenz, travel time app.
90-120 min (23 EUR), car ride from the airport app. 75 min.

Arrival by train

Deutsche Bahn
(German Railways):
Koblenz is located at the IC/EC track that connects the major cities from north to south in Germany.
Many international long-distance trains (including EuroCityNight) to Cologne, Frankfurt, Hannover, Hamburg pass through Koblenz.
Direct trains to the airports Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Hahn, Cologne-Bonn, Dusseldorf are available.
A dedicated bus link (Bus #20) connects the main station with university campus (15 min).

Use the journey planner of German railways
with destination "Koblenz HBF" (Koblenz main station). It is
possible to buy tickets online. From Koblenz main station, you can
take a bus or taxi to your hotel/hostel or to the Campus. The taxi rank
and the large bus station are located in front of the main
entrance.

Arrival by car

Major car rental companies have offices in all mentioned airports.
In general, all non-residents (including non-EU nationals) are permitted to use the driving license (issued by their local authority)
during the first 6 months of stay in Germany. Moreover, EU/EWR driving licences are accepted without any temporal limitation.
In some cases, care rental companies may require an authenticated translation of the original driving license, in order
to ensure your eliglibility. This is often the case if the driving license is partly written in the national language and/or does not clearly
indicate categories of vehicles. For instance, Russian "international" driving licenses are known for this kind of questions.
Last but not least: Make sure you drive alive! Drive on the right!

For GPS navigation, please use the following target address: 56070 Koblenz, intersection Oberweiher - Universitätsstrasse (50.362318,7.557238).
This will bring you to the main entry of the Campus. Parking lots can be found in front of the main entry on the left (quite small), on the right (larger),
the way down to
the Moselle river on the left side (large) and also - just few steps away - under the big Moselle bridge (huge). Just follow the corresponding
signs for parking. All mentioned parking lots are free of charge. Parking lots in the street Oberweiher above the Campus are for
short-stay parking (Disc Parking max 2h). Warning: parking outside designated spaces
is not allowed, the traffic wardens inspect our parking areas daily.

Getting around in Koblenz

The taxi from the city center or the train station to the Campus (8-9 min) costs app. 10 EUR. We recommend to explicitly ask for
'University Campus Metternich'
(Metternich is a district of Koblenz). Many years ago, the Campus was located on the opposite side of the city, and some mature
taxi drivers may mix up destinations. Taxi services:
Bani (+49-261-12600) or
Taxi Koblenz (+49-261-33055).

Taking a bus from the city center or from the train station to the Campus takes 12-15 minutes and costs 2,45 EUR for a single journey.
A variety of special fares (e.g. 1-day ticket, group ticket for 5 people) are also available.
Buses to/from the campus are: #3 (from city center), #15 (from main station/city center) and #20 (from main station, this is the fastest link).
Complete Timetables (Campus bus stops are "Winninger Strasse" or "Oberweiher/Uni"). Please consult
Interactive Map, Google Maps for detailed information about available bus stops.

For regional bus connections around Koblenz, you should check the VRM Web site.
Many destinations can be reached by regional trains. The cheapest way
to explore Rhineland is one-day Rhineland ticket which is valid on almost all buses,
coaches, and buses in Rhineland-Palatinate and in Saarland. This ticket is available in
Internet, from ticket vending machines in train stations, and on the bus from bus driver.

Travel Info

Entry permission:

In many cases, non-EU nationals are required to obtain the entry
permission (Schengen Visa) for Germany. Please consult
the advices of the German Federal Foreign Office
for further information regarding your country and visa requirements.

Weather:

Due to an unique and favourable geographic location (Rhine valley, surrounded by low mountain ranges of Westerwald, Eifel, and Hunsrueck),
Koblenz is known for very good weather conditions all over the year. The average air temperature in August/September is rather moderate with
ca. 17-18°C, but the last summer 2010 also had very hot weeks over 30°C. For detailed information,
check timeanddate.com

Time Zone:

Germany is located in the CET/CEST time zone (UTC+1/+2). This means UTC/GMT +2 hours during the summer DST
and UTC/GMT +1 hour in the winter time.
For more information,
look at timeanddate.com.

Money:

The German currency is Euro (EUR). Currency exchange desks can be found at all international airports.
Lokal bank offices offer currency exchange as well (for safety reasons, they reluctantly exchange big amounts of cash).
ATM machines offer cash withdawal by credit cards and Maestro (in almost the cases this service is not free of charge,
you should ask your bank about cash withdrawal fees). To estimate exchange rates, play around with
Yahoo! currency converter.
A full-featured ATM service can be found in a small "Sparkasse"-house at the main Campus entry.

Larger shops and restaurants
accept all major credit cards and Maestro as well. Common supermarkets (Aldi, Lidl, Rewe, Norma, Plus) accept Maestro but NOT credit cards. Small
shops and pubs may have no electronic payment facilities on site. Tip is accepted but not mandatory, 10% is the common value.
Travel cheques are not really common and not widely accepted. Visitors from non-EC countries can benefit
from Tax-Free Shopping
in Germany.

Tourism office:

Koblenz Touristik provides a very detailed and well structured Web portal
for Koblenz visitors. Highly recommended!

Electricity:

German mains power system offers 230 V 50 Hz AC, common outlets (i.e. plugs and sockets) are SchuKo (symmetrical plug with side grounding contacts),
sometimes also the simpler
Europlug (2-pin plug without grounding contacts). Travel stores at all airports
and local electronics stores in Koblenz (e.g. MediaMarkt, Saturn, Expert, ProMarkt) offer a broad range of adaptors at reasonable prices. Devices designed
for lower voltage levels (e.g. 110V hairdryers) also require a suitable upstream transformer!

Communication:

Major telecommunication providers in Germany are German Telekom and Vodafone (900 MHz) as well as O2 and E-Plus (1800 MHz).
It is recommended to check in advance the roaming conditions
for in/out mobile calls. Possible alternatives are Skype/VoIP and callback services
(e.g. Bellshare, flat2flat, Flexsys, Sparruf, to name a few). In parallel, the network of public telephone stations is shrinking - at the moment,
there is no public telephone box on the Campus.

Mobile internet via UMTS (WWAN aka 3G) has already reasonably
good support in Koblenz, Vodafone D2 seems to have the best coverage. Stable HSDPA is available in the city center, EDGE almost everywhere.
It is recommended to check in advance your data roaming conditions, many providers do not support roaming at high HSDPA speeds, and volume prices
are also quite different.

The Campus offers dedicated W-Lan access vor visitors, which is available for our visitors on request, free of charge.
As an alternative, you also can authenticate your W-Lan access via Eduroam, which is fully supported in our University. The bakery and coffee shop
"Hoefer" in front of the Campus offers its own W-Lan access for free (!). Wired internet will be available in lecture halls.

Post office:

There is no public post office and no letter box on the campus. However, there is a full-service Retail Outlet in the
REWE shop nearby.

Shops:

The supermarkets REWE, Norma, Edeka and Aldi are located next to the Campus. A big shopping mall "Löhr Centre"
can be found in the city center, it is co-located with main bus interchange.

A huge (one of the largest in Germany) shopping areal with numerous outlets and stores
is located in Mülheim-Kärlich near Koblenz. To get there, take the regional Bus #357
from one of the central bus stops in the city
(consult VRM Web site for bus stops, timetables and fares).
In this case, don't miss also a nice public swimming pool Tauris nearby (Bus #354).

Handicapped access:

ESSIR offers full access for disabled attendees on the entire campus: elevators in all buildings, stairs-free pathways and ramps, dedicated
restroom facilities. On request, people with disabilities can access the Campus by car and use dedicated parking lots
directly in front of particular buildings. Koblenz operates only low-floor buses with improved disabled access, dedicated places for wheelchairs,
and call buttons for boarding assistance. Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) offers systematic and comprehensive
support for passengers with disabilities.

Local attractions:

A MUST: Rhine boat trip to the magnificent Rhine valley at the Loreley - Unesco World
Heritage with wineyards, numerous medieval castles, and Rhine of course. Very recommended: take the old paddle
steamer RMS GOETHE of Köln-Düsseldorfer shipping lines,
the oldest ship on the Rhine. Recommended segment of
Rhine: between Bingen and Boppard (return by train is possible).
Koblenz Touristik provides nice
tour recommendations and a detailed overview of shipping lines.

Castle of Marksburg near Koblenz, the most famous medieval castle of the
Rhine valley which has never been destroyed (unlike many others).

Wine: Rhine and Moselle are famous for excellent wines, especially white
Riesling. Small villages and towns along the river valleys offer numerous
opportunities for wine tasting. Avoid central, large restaurants
(full of Japanese tourists) and have a lookout for a
besom on the wall of a small wine-grower shop - it shows that his small wine
pub is open! It is often called "Besenwirtschaft" or "Straussenwirtschaft".

Hiking and bike tours: Rhineland has the best infrastructure in Germany! Many
ideas and tour suggestions for the surroundings of Koblenz can be found at
portals Traumpfade and Radwanderland.
These sites are mostly in
German, so do not hesitate to ask us if you are interested and need some help!
Koblenz Touristik
provides addresses of local
bike rental shops and some tour recommendations.

The world-largest cold geyser in Andernach near Koblenz.
Trip
includes the visit to the interactive geyser museum, a short boat trip on the Rhine to the
near nature reserve where the geyser is situated, and of course a geyser eruption (50-
60m high !!!).

Volcano museum "Lava-Dome" in Mendig near Koblenz.
We are
situated in the area of high volcanic activity (hotspot area) which results in
numerous volcanoes, volcanic seas, lava streams and hills surrounding Koblenz.
The trip includes a visit to the interactive museum, guided tour with descent
into lava mine, and explanations of old stonemason handicraft in Mendig.

During panoramic flights you can enjoy the valleys of Rhine and Moselle in a
very special and unique manner.

Further interesting options include: medieval castles of Rhine and Moselle,
waterski, climbing, aerobatic flights and gliding, slate mines, chamber concerts,
etc. etc. - do not hesitate to contact us if you are interested!

Smoking:

In Germany, smoking is not permitted in public rooms (including all Campus facilities, city shops, restaurants and pubs,
with quite few exceptions). Smoking is also quite expensive: one cigarette packet costs 4.50 EUR and taxes are expected to grow further
in near future. Cigarette vending machines can be found in front of the campus entrance (age verification by Maestro
chipcard of by driver license), you may also buy cigarettes in kiosks, petrol stations and some shops around, but NOT on the Campus.

Kontaktinformationen

Disclaimer

EN: The contents of this Web site have been carefully checked.
However, I cannot guarantee the absolute correctnes, completeness, and recency of all informations provided.
I do not have any control over external linked Web sources. Insofar, I cannot ensure the liability of them, especially
there is no guarantee that the external contents is correct and up to date.
The views expressed on external Web sites are purely those of the respetive writer or
content provider and may not in any circumstances be regarded as
stating an official position of Dr. Dr. Sergej Sizov, the Institute for Web Science and Technologies,
or its staff members.

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Getting around

Over my years in Koblenz with 20+ locally organized project metings, 3 conferences, and one summer school,
I've collected a couple of useful hints for incoming visitors. If you are planning a trip to Koblenz, the
following pages might be of interest for you:

Koblenz - Germany's most beautiful "corner"

Koblenz is a wonderful old Roman town with modern infrastructure and a young spirit.
The University of Koblenz offers a fully equipped modern campus with comprehensive congress
facilities, convenient hotels nearby, surrounded by a beautiful, UNESCO world heritage
landscape of the Rhine valley, historical attractions like medieval Rhine castles, and a
convenient infrastructure for travel from all over the world, including four international airports,
excellent railway connections, and several highways.

Koblenz is situated in the picturesque landscape of the Rhine and Moselle (UNESCO world heritage),
known for excellent wines, romantic medieval castles, Loreley and Goethe. The town owes its name
to the Romans who named the castle "castellum apud confluentes" - this means "castle at the confluence of the rivers".

A variety of cultural offers (sightseeing, museums, boat trips on Rhine and Moselle), outdoor activities (hiking, bike tours)
and a certain portion of nightlife with several attractive locations in the historical city centre make Koblenz an ideal location for our summer school.
Due to a favourable geographic location (Rhine valley, surrounded by low mountain ranges of Westerwald, Eifel, and Hunsrueck), Koblenz is
also known for very good weather conditions all over the year.

The University of Koblenz is located on the newest, fully developed university campus in Germany.

MeinProf Profile

MeinProf is a Social Networking site for students of German universities.
It allows students to post feedback on lectures and lecturers. On the opposite side, lecturers can inform
about their courses, literature, and other teaching related materials.

Teaching Archive

Theses

I offer a broad range of themes in the field of Web Science as topics for Master theses.
Subproblems in particular themes can also be considered for Bachelor theses and Internship theses.

Agile research management

Mentoring and supervision of my Master and PhD students is organized by the principle of
"agile research management". The core idea is to adopt some common software development techniques
(known as agile development) for the research domain.
A nice recent article
"SCORE: Agile Research Group Management" explains it works in practice.
The core component of our agile research is the special interest group FourCats.

Industrial projects (archive)

Federnwerke J.P. Grueber (2000): simulation and optimization of the material flow in the manufacturing of hot-formed springs, integration and risk analysis for new manufacturing technologies. Role: Coordination of the consulting project, supervisor for 3 staff members.

Deutsche Grove (1997-2000): simulation, analysis, and inter-divisional optimization of the material flow in the manufacturing chain of crane parts in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. Role: scientific coordination of the project, member of the advisory board, supervisor for 2 staff members and 4 Bachelor students (University of Applied Sciences Wilhelmshaven, Germany).

DaimlerChrysler Aerospace Airbus (1997-1999): Planning and optimization of the material flow in the manufacturing of small-sized construction elements. Modelling the changeover to the modern technology of high-speed cut. Role: Scientific coordination and supervision for 5 staff members and 3 Bachelor students (University of Applied Sciences Wilhelmshaven, University Oldenburg).

Jade-Weser-Harbor (1998-1999): simulation and planning of logistics for the new container terminal at the north sea in the harbour of Wilhelmshaven, Germany. Role: Head of the scientific workgroup, supervisor for 3 staff members and 4 bachelor students (University of Applied Sciences Wilhelmshaven, University Bremen).

Refinery of Wilhelmshaven (1998-1999): simulation and optimization of actions for better fill rate of available tank capacities and tanker bridges. Role: Scientific leadership, supervision for 2 staff members and 5 Bachelor students (University of Applied Sciences Wilhelmshaven).

Jos. L. Meyer GmbH (Meyer dockyard) (1997-1998): simulation and analysis of logistics in the area of panel assembly (manufacturing of flat construction elements). Role: head of the consulting project, supervisor for 4 staff members and 3 Bachelor students (University of Applied Sciences Wilhelmshaven).

Atlas Weyhausen (1997): Optimization of the material flow in the area container assembly. Role: coordination of the academic project, supervisor for 2 Bachelor students (University of Applied Sciences Wilhelmshaven).

Research projects (archive)

WeGov (2010-2012): STREP of the 7th EU Framework Programme:
analysis and support of political discussions in social media (detection of political
trends and opinions, content summarization, moderation of political discussions)

X-Media (2006-2010): Integrated project (IP) of the 6th European Union Framework Programme.
Large international project in the area of knowledge management for complex distributed systems.
Project budget 13 Mio EUR, 15 international partners from 7 European countries.

My role: Area Coordinator for "Knowledge Sharing and Reuse",
Leader of the work package "Dynamic Knowledge"(at the University Koblenz-Landau, Germany).

Handicraft Information Portal HIP (2003-2005): Development of the thematically focused
Web exploration framework for the German chamber of small trades.

My role: scientific and administrative
supervisor of the project, coordination of 8 staff members (Saarland University, University of
Applied Sciences Saarbruecken, German Chamber of Small Trades), Germany

Measures of success

Are we doing good research? The researcher's success is hard to measure directly, but there are some - quite reliable -
indicators: regular contributions to high-quality, competitive conferences and journals, high citation rates in the target community,
awards and academic distinctions. A number of reliable online sources can be used to find out "who is who" in computer science:

Paper rejected?

Most probably the paper was not good enough. Keep up, major revision, resubmission, got through! But
maybe the contribution was just too much ahead of time? In this case, you are in good company! The common peer reviewing system
does not easily accept too innovative, controversal ideas (btw, the underlying mechanism is explained - in a more general sense -
in our CIKM'04 paper
"Goal-oriented Methods And Meta Methods For Document Classification And Their Parameter Tuning", see Publications).

Less formally, there is a nice article on this phenomenon, coined "We are sorry to inform you". Read and relax a bit before the
next submission deadline.

Special Interest Group on Web Science, aka fourcats

Not yet firmly convinced? Well, then you may think that this name is inspired by several second-order associations with Web Science
in the style of Antoni Gaudi:

The Gaudi way of understanding fourcats

First of all, in many European languages "four cats" is a
metaphor for "a few people". For example, Els
Quatre Gats is the name of a famous pub in Barcelona, which was since 1896 a meeting point of progressive artists for interdisciplinary
discussions (e.g. first inofficial exhibition of young Picasso was there). Similarly, we are a small interdisciplinary group:
one postdoc, four PhD students, and 2-3 graduates. We meet in a quite informal atmosphere, and discuss issues around Web Science.

The mentioned pub "Els Quatre Gats" is located not far away from the quarter
of Yahoo! Research Barcelona, which is our partner in many research activities related to Web Science.

The name "four cats" is a pun for "forecast", which indirectly links to
our predictive models for multi-lingual retrieval, detection of small comunities and events in social media, and thematically focused retrieval
of multimedia art objects in Social Media. Hmm, isn't "four cats" also an anagram for "focus art"?..

P.S. Well, when we talk about artists and Picasso, why not also about Paris? Indeed, we do. The meeting point of French bohemians was the
Parisian cabaret Le Chat Noir (i.e. The Black Cat),
seriously. Like Els Quatre Gats, it also exists until now.